


But You Don't

by Coffee_Flavored_Kisses



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Johnlock - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 14:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2736752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coffee_Flavored_Kisses/pseuds/Coffee_Flavored_Kisses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by a post by loudest-subtext-in-television, this is just a thing I wrote for Doctor Watson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But You Don't

He’s so beautiful, and you can’t take your eyes off him.  
It’s not just that he’s beautiful. Lots of people are beautiful. It’s not just his eyes of flawless aquamarine, his luscious curls, his cheekbones of marble waterfalls. It’s not just the way that he shook your hand when he first met you, grasping it, fingers sliding over your skin as if he was making a study of you in that very moment – and he was. It is so much more than these things.   
You’ve never met a mind so brilliant. He speaks, and the things he says are so… different. His words are extraordinary, unusual, as if he’s a walking thesaurus. His speech is so eloquent, words flowing from between his billowed lips in a baritone so smooth it could calm a hurricane. He looks to you for confirmation, for reassurance, and you give it to him. You’d give him anything, wouldn’t you?  
He’d do the same, dear doctor.   
You had a dream once where the two of you were on a case. This is nothing unusual. But in this dream, at the end of it, he thanked you for your help, then told you that he loved you. He said it in such a matter-of-fact manner that it seemed too real not to be true. You woke before you responded to him, but when you spotted him in the living room drinking his morning tea, you were half-tempted to sit across from him, open the Times, and say “You too” while looking down at the daily news.  
But you don’t do that.  
Some days you are convinced he’s half machine, too mechanical to feel things the way you do. It frustrates you. It hurts you. You want to grip him by the throat and strangle him because he’s such an idiot sometimes. You want to shake him, startle him, hope to joggle his brains into something that works, something that makes sense, something that will leave you just enough space between the information he has retained and that which he has locked away to allow the fact of your feelings to seep through.  
But you don’t do that.  
You rattle off a few ideas, some things the two of you have on for the day. There’s a case or two that he may want to take a look at since it’s been over twelve hours since the last one and he’s likely to get antsy soon. He solves the cases not only without leaving the flat, but without leaving his chair as well. You shake your head. You smile. You frown. You don’t know how you feel about how stubborn this man can be sometimes.  
And then you just… say it. You say you’re hungry, but that you’d like to go out instead of order in. He gives all the usual excuses – people, talking, the effort of getting out of his chair in which he happens to be quite comfortable, thank you very much. You insist. He can’t say no.  
He’s quite like you sometimes.  
So you go out, and he suggests the usual places. You want something new, but he tells you that this restaurant has a cook with an ingrown, infected fingernail, and that you’ll regret it, and that that restaurant doesn’t serve the beef the way he likes it. So you go to Angelo’s because, well… it’s Angelo’s. At least you know you won’t have to foot the bill this time.  
Conversation is difficult to come by. He’s not one to start it, and everything you bring up can be answered succinctly and with a yes or a no or a you-know-just-as-well-as-I-do, et cetera. Surprisingly, and to your delight, he’s eating well today. You smile at how he can discuss post-mortems – a subject you found that he will talk about (finally) – and about internal organs that smelled as if they’d been decaying longer than the rest of the body while he shovels gravy down his gullet. You are confident that there is no one else in the world like him. And then you’re glad for that. For so many reasons.  
You’re trying to find the right time to tell him about your dream. There’s no real reason for you to bring it up except that it keeps begging to be brought up. You know that if you do tell it, his reaction won’t be what you’re hoping it will be. What are you hoping it will be, anyway?  
Finally between the potatoes and the beef, you look up at him and briefly – and I mean very briefly – you catch him looking at you. The look that you see isn’t one you’ve ever seen before, though if you were any of us, you’d have easily seen it a hundred times by now. His eyes never seemed so big, his brows almost furrowed as if he needed something from you in a way he’s never needed anything from you before. He sighs audibly when he looks away. You’ve never seen anything like it. He knows he’s been caught, and everything about his body language now tells you he hopes you don’t bring it up.  
But you do.  
You ask him if everything’s alright, and obviously he says it’s fine. You call him a liar, he rebuts. This goes on for a moment. He won’t look at you, and you need his attention. You say his name, he shakes you off. You reach across the table. You touch his hand, and he doesn’t pull it away this time.  
He looks up at you.  
Slowly you withdraw your hand. You’ve got his attention now. No need to push it.  
You tell him that you worry about him. You don’t know why you do, so you make up some excuse about his seeming overworked as if that could ever be true. He sees right through you. He always sees right through you. Except when it matters.  
This is it. This is when you need to say it. You aren’t sure if you’re going to talk about that stupid dream or if you’re going to just admit it.   
I have feelings for you.  
I’m attracted to you.  
I’m in love with you.  
I need you so desperately that some days I think I could die from the pain.  
You settle for telling him that you’re so grateful to have him as a friend. He side-eyes you, not buying it for a minute. He’s not going to ask you what’s wrong, but clearly something is. Suddenly you aren’t hungry anymore. You tell him it’s time to go home. He agrees. Voraciously.  
It’s a pleasant night, so you walk. He turns his collar up, obviously trying to deduce what’s going on in his flatmate’s mind. You need to ignore him, but then you can never ignore him. In fact, everything in you wants to grab him by that goddamned collar and push his back to the bricks and call him filthy, demeaning names while you rub your body against his.  
But you don’t.  
You reach home, both of you now full of not only food but of questions that will go unanswered by the other. He hangs his coat on the back of the door, ventures to the kitchen, pulls a plastic container of lower intestine out of the fridge, sits himself at the table, and begins an experiment. You watch him, and he has no idea you’re even there anymore. He’s married to that work, to that gut, to the microscope and those slides and everything else that isn’t you, as he has reminded you over and over again. So you retreat to your room where you will think about that dream, and you will touch yourself, and you will wish your hands were his hands and that you knew what his breath feels like against your neck.  
He’s so beautiful, you think. Why does he have to be so fucking beautiful?   
Later that evening, you find yourself updating your blog, words from the day before, words you have conjured to describe the man you love in such a way that people will not think you love him.  
Machine.  
Not human.  
Uncaring.  
Mechanical.  
Drug.  
You’ve described him as that last one before, and you will again. Because of all the things you’ve said about him, none could be more true. He is like a drug – he is your drug. You need him in order to survive. Without him you become something you don’t want to be. He is your high. He is your release. He is your escape. He is that forbidden element which you can never give up. And you need him, John Watson. You need him now and you’ll need him again and over and over until you either give him up or die, and neither of those options appeals to you.  
You have a list of a couple dozen Sarahs and Rachels and Christinas in your phone, and any one of them will do to scratch the proverbial itch. But that’s like buying cannabis laced with oregano or cocaine with flour. It’s not satisfying. It’s a cheap knockoff. It’s not what you crave – not really.  
But you call one of them anyway. And before you’ve ended the call you’ve forgotten her name.  
You get ready, walk downstairs, see him sitting in the same place where he’s been sat for hours now. Doesn’t he get bored? You’re furious with him and really, you have no reason to be.   
You tell him you’re going out, and he asks why and where and his semi-usual twenty questions. But this time instead of satisfying his curiosity, you tell him it’s none of his business, and that if he wouldn’t mind clearing his trash off of all the available eating areas before you return home, you’d appreciate it very much. Your passive-aggressive tone catches him off guard, and he actually opens his mouth to ask what’s wrong. You know that’s what he’s going to ask. He leaves his seat. He approaches you. And as you stand with your back to the door and the man you love just three feet away, you find yourself speechless.  
He knows. It’s evidenced in your pupils or in your pulse or in something else he has come up with to determine what you feel. He knows better than you do sometimes, and that angers you. But now he knows, and you wish he didn’t. Because if he knows, and you know… sooner or later one of you is going to have to say it.  
You decide it won’t be you, but then you aren’t going to just stand there, either.  
He hangs his head, the realization coming to him like a wave that moves over his body at varying speeds. His eyes searching your body, hands clenched, feet shuffling slightly. He doesn’t know what to say. And that’s when it occurs to you that this tin man might just have a heart.  
You whisper his name; you want to tell him that you’re sorry to have overreacted. You want to excuse yourself to leave so that by the time you come home in the morning both of you have had time to pretend to have forgotten this moment. But all that comes out of your mouth is his name in a desperate, wanting whisper. His name in a tone of lust. His name in a way you’ve said it before alone behind closed doors and under very different circumstances.   
At the sound of your voice, as if a demand, his hand takes hold of your arm, bracing you as his body clashes against yours. His lips are on your lips, his chest against your chest. You can taste him. You can feel him. You can call him yours now and you will even if after this he never touches you again.  
Somehow you find your senses and your hands recover first, cradling his face, thumbs running along the smooth curve of his strong jaw. You want to cry and you want to scream but neither is possible now. You know that you’re moving because the room around you keeps changing, and when you find yourself falling into his bed it’s still something of a surprise.  
And when he’s naked with you, and you’ve seen every part of him you’d barely allowed yourself to imagine before, you smile because saying you love him seems a painfully obvious thing to do now.   
But you don’t.  
You don’t need to.

**Author's Note:**

> http://loudest-subtext-in-television.tumblr.com/post/104523874234/imagine-the-first-time-sherlock-continued-to#notes
> 
> This inspired me, in case you're wondering. She's a thousand times better than I am.


End file.
